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My interview with GolinHarris CEO Fred Cook on the occasion of the publication of his new book "Improvise--Unconventional Career Advice from an Unlikely CEO."

Fred is a legend in the PR business and teamed up with another legend, Al Golin, to build GolinHarris into one of the top 10 largest PR firms in the world (now part of the IPG portfolio). Fred is anything but a typical CEO. As his book states: He barely graduated from college, never took a business course, had no corporate connections, didn't own a suite and rode a motorcycle. Along the way, he picked up skills in people-management, problem-solving, and most importantly, improvising--that ultimately led to a surprisingly rewarding career. He argues that the ability to improvise is a critical survival skill that will set young professionals apart from the pack and help them get ahead of the competition.

Fred Cook, CEO, GolinHarris

Bruce Rogers: You've had a long and storied career building your PR firm, what prompted you to write the book now?

Fred Cook: We have a very young workforce and I spend a lot of time speaking at college campuses. I find that younger people today are under an enormous stress about their futures. It dawned on me that my stories might be relevant to them because I had a very interesting career path and ended up becoming a CEO. People today don’t come into the workforce with very much life experience. They've all got four or five internships but they don’t know much about life. From a company’s perspective, I worry about finding fresh perspectives from people who all are sort of a commodity? From their perspective, I worry they’re afraid to have a new idea or to engage with new people who provide an enriching life and career.

Rogers: I would have thought millennials think they know a little bit about everything and all they need is someone to mentor them through their career path and they’ll be fine.

Cook: I was at this seminar recently and one of the presenters was a research company that said that 75 percent of millennials know exactly what they want to do when they’re in college and that they know exactly what they want to do when they grow up, and it’s just bull, – because they don’t. I’m at colleges all the time and these kids are under a lot of pressure and they don’t know exactly what they want to do, but they feel pressure to get the perfect job the day they graduate. That's just not realistic because half of them end up working at . I think they need to worry less and realize you that you can learn a lot from those kinds of experiences, even though they may not be exactly what you had hoped for.

Rogers: That’s interesting. I don’t think anyone has put that perspective forward before, that you should use your time at an ostensibly menial job wisely because you can use the life experience as a steppingstone, is that what you’re saying?

Cook: I have a chapter in my book called “Work For Tips” that talks specifically about that. I was a doorman for a couple of years. As someone who relied on tips, I learned a lot about problem-solving and how you put that to work in your career. I have another chapter called “Substitute” later in the book, which is when I was a substitute teacher in the worst schools in L.A., and how I used that job to teach myself public relations. I did all these PR programs for the school on my own time that were very rewarding and trained me in public relations when I was doing something that I really didn't enjoy, which was school teaching. If you get the wrong job, figure out what you can learn from of it, while you begin practicing for the job that you really want.

Rogers: You’re a PR maven, but the book really doesn't talk about GolinHarris, does it?

Cook: I do In the very last chapter. We’re an almost 60-year-old company, and three years ago, based on all the changes happening in the media and marketing world, we threw out a business model that we had been using successfully since the beginning, and we created a whole new model which we call g4. We were the first media agency of any kind to do this, and we didn’t have any blueprint for it. There were no books to read, no instruction manuals to follow, no consultants to help us. We changed the whole way we operate, and we invented all new training programs, all new classifications for our employees. We did assessments for every single person in the firm and reassigned them to different kinds of jobs. We were improvising big time and it's been great for us. We’re still figuring it out as we go, and we’re sort of in the middle of that path. I use that as a personal example of improvising in the business world. I talk a lot about the importance of being an improvisational leader, because in this day and age when everything moves so fast, you don’t always have all the information you need to make a decision and be sure it’s correct. Whether you’re the president of a country or the president of a company, sometimes you have to rely on your instincts, because you don’t have time to do six months of market research and analyze every opinion poll. You have to just do what you think is right based on the information you have at hand, and I think more companies and more people need to know how to do that. Because companies like BlackBerry and , who are too slow to adapt to the marketplace will lose out.

Rogers: When, when did you start that transformation?

Cook: Three years ago, and we got a lot of publicity in our industry because every agency was talking about change, but no agency was doing anything to change. They all just kept doing business the way they had before. We were the first agency in our industry to do anything like this, and people were fascinated by it. Hundreds of articles were written about us, and other agencies were studying us and copying us, and they still are, but it was because we were doing something different. Instead of just talking about it, we revamped the whole way we work, and it’s still a work in progress. On a scale of 1 to 10, we’re probably at about a 6 in our transformation after three years. We keep changing course and doing things differently.

Rogers: The communications and marketing side of the house is undergoing tremendous transformation. You've spent a lot of your time with CEOs and to a lesser extent, CMOs and CCOs. From my perspective, a CEO’s job, is a pretty lonely place.

Cook: Yes, it can be lonely at the top. I have a chapter in my book about that. It’s called “Ask the Captain.” I provide some anecdotes about when I send out thoughtful e-mails to our entire staff that I’ve pondered over for weeks about a new initiative or recent results and I don’t get a single response. People are afraid to respond. CEOs are the people that need the feedback the most and they get the least. They’re just operating in a vacuum half the time.

Rogers: what’s your advice for CEOs on how to be more improvisational?